Another victim of his war in Ukraine

• Russia’s exports of arms fell in the middle of the Ukrainian conflict.
• France exceeded Russia last year as the second largest exporter of weapons in the world.
• Russian weapons manufacturers face a range of challenges that emerged after the invasion of Ukraine.

It has been three years since the Invasion of Russia on a large scale of Ukraine, and the conflict had a deep effect on the Russian arms industry, bringing up its arms exports.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIRPI), which is looking for conflicts and weapons, calculated that Russian weapons exports halved from 2019 to 2023 compared to the previous five years.

Other estimates paint an even more sinking image.

Pavel Luzin, a non -resident researcher at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a DC reflection group, calculated that Russian arms exports had less than $ 1 billion from January to December 2024. They had lasted $ 14.6 billion in 2021; They fell to $ 8 billion in 2022 before falling more than $ 3 billion in 2023.

Developer, France has passed Russia as a second exporter of weapons in the world.

“We see that Russia, as an exporter of weapons, generally failed,” said Luzin last November.

The amazing decline in sales is partly the result of a quarter of work from the manufacturers of Russian weapons far from export contracts and the production of more weapons for Russian military fights in Ukraine.

What is Russia rushes to replace?

The Russian army underwent very high loss of material during the war.

The Open Source Intelligence website ORYX indicates Russia has lost 3,773 tanks, 1,933 armored combat vehicles, 5,531 infantry combat vehicles, 615 armored vehicles, nearly 2,000 artillery pieces of all types and many other equipment.

Given that the above are only losses that could be checked via photographs or videos, Oryx believes that real Russian losses are much higher.

Russian arms companies have worked overtime to replace them. (Moscow has also exploited its inventory of older equipment from the Soviet era; however, 2025 could be the last year that it can count on stored weapons, Luzin written in January.)

Although the credibility of official Russian data is suspicious, “the production of new military equipment increased considerably in 2023”, following domestic demand, said Sirpi, with Rostec and Tactical Missile Corp, the two largest arms companies in Russia, seeing their income combined increase by 40% that year.

However, this momentum may not be durable.

Increased production has exerted pressure on Russian weapons companies, which face the workforce and financial shortages and the growing costs due to the sanctions imposed by Western countries, Luzin wrote. They therefore have trouble continuing to produce the necessary equipment and have largely interrupted foreign contracts.

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Where did everyone go?

Russian companies also lose customers. In 2019, Russia sold weapons in 31 countries – in 2023, this number fell to 12, according to Sirpi. This depends on the supply chains and geopolitics.

Since the purchase of weapons is often a declaration of alignment, several countries which bought Russian weapons have turned to Western, domestic or other alternatives.

In addition, due to the sanctions imposed on Russia, the maintenance of Russian weapons becomes more and more difficult for buyers. Therefore, to protect themselves from uncertain maintenance, countries are looking for safer sellers.

In Asia and Oceania, which represented almost 70% of global Russian weapons exports between 2018 and 2023, the United States is now the largest seller. And in sub -Saharan Africa, where Russia was the largest seller, first place is now owned by China.

“Russian weapons export categories in the past two decades (have mainly) included air defense systems, combat aircraft / helicopters and their parts (including engines), and certain naval systems such as diesel-electrical submarines, corvettes and anti-shipping missiles,” said Luzin, who also told Business Insider of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tofts University, told Business Insider.

These weapons, however, were far from excellent, he added.

Published research in the national interest Indicates that China began to question Russia at the end of the lower value of the weapon spectrum, what is called the “value weapons market”.

At the upper end of the spectrum, South Korea has made significant progress to the detriment of Russia thanks to its rapid production times and its arms compatible with NATO.

In addition to moving the development of the production of its weapons manufacturers, the war in Ukraine has damaged Russian weapons exports in more ways, with some of the country’s most publicized systems (such as S-400) prove more vulnerable on the battlefield that initially praised by Moscow.

Reputation losses also influence the slowdown in arms exports in the country, Luzin told Business Insider.

In addition, the dependence of Russian companies on “electronic import and machine tools on the manufacturing scene” has also had an impact, he added. Access to these components is more difficult to find due to international sanctions.

And even at the end of the war, things may not return to business as usual for the Russian arms industry. Covering the lost ground will be “quite difficult, if not impossible at all,” said Luzin.